Make Damn Sure
by DramaticStarlet
Summary: It's raining on their wedding day. BeckJade.


**MAKE DAMN SURE.**

jade/beck.  
by katie lynn.

if you know me, you're aware that i hate bade with the burning passion of a thousand suns. like i just hate them so much. they can never be happy. EVER. however, i wanted to try something different and push myself a little so this is my ATTEMPT at trying to justify bade.

title comes from "makedamnsure" by taking back sunday.

!

Beckett Oliver and Jade West get married because it seems like the right thing to do after being together for so long. Both are out of college and have steady jobs (Beck as an acting coach and Jade as assistant art director at a record label) - that means everybody _expects _marriage out of them.

And also, both parties are incredibly tired.

Fighting and yelling and make-up sex and explosive days mixed with dynamite nights are fun when you're sixteen and experimenting. It all gets a little old by the time you're twenty four and ready to be a grown up. So they get married; because maybe it'll fix everything. Maybe their tempers will simmer down. Maybe things like Beck writing down non-organic eggs on the grocery list won't set Jade off like a firecracker on the fourth of July.

Jade always wanted a fall wedding - or at least, that's what she tells Beck - so they get married in September. It's raining outside the church, but it's the hot and wet and sticky kind. Like liquid hellfire. Cat asks Jade if she's upset about the rain but the blue-eyed girl just responds with, "Why would I be?"

"Do you, Beckett James Oliver III, take Jade Addison West, to be your lawfully wedded wife?"

Beck says yes, but doesn't look happy. He looks relieved and content; not happy.

"Do you, Jade Addison West, take Beckett James Oliver III, to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

Jade says yes. She smiles. There's something missing.

The reception is the most fun part of the wedding, or at least that's what the guests will tell you because nobody exactly remembers it. The entire wedding party and most of the guests drink an immense amount of alcohol. Jade walks in on Cat giving Andre a blowjob in the ladies' bathroom, which she never lets them live down. Beck leads the entire wedding party in a drunken rendition of "Benny and The Jets".

Beck and Jade don't sleep together on the first night of their marriage. Beck holds her hair while she throws up; she falls asleep in the hotel bathtub.

!

They have a lot of sex on their honeymoon, mostly out of boredom. Everything seems so painfully _normal_.

Jade misses when they were sophomores in high school and thought they'd always be so incredibly crazy for each other. She wishes she were still crazy about Beck. He's handsome and witty and makes her dinner every Thursday and they fuck _all_ the time (she wonders if he wants kids). It isn't enough.

Beck is okay with his life. Everybody says he's lucky to be married to Jade. She's sexy and confident and so God damn feisty. He knows he loved her at some point, really he did. It isn't love that he feels when he looks at her now. It's this good feeling that he knows she'll never leave.

"I want to marry Cat," Andre tells Beck a year after the wedding. Andre always knows what he wants.

Beck takes a long drink from his beer bottle. Rubs his hand over his stubbly cheek. Gives Andre a look. "Why?"

"Jesus, man. Why do you think. Why'd you marry Jade?"

_It was the easy way out _is what he wants to say, but he just smiles to himself and murmurs, "Obviously because I love her."

!

They have two kids together, a girl (Summer Catherine and Beckett James IV).

And Beck and Jade really _do _love them. For a while, they're a family. They go to the park together, sing the kids to sleep every night and tuck them in and swear to God they can't wait until they're older and can pick out their own outfits and sleep through the night.

Beck and Jade bond for a long time over their kids. They stop fucking and _make love _instead. They hold hands in the car. No fighting, though. Fighting was for when they were kids.

Summer is 13 and Jamie is 11 when the first argument in a long time happens.

"Beck, did you send the house payment?"

"No, you said you would. Remember? Before you took Summer to dance class last week?"

"...so even though you saw it sitting on the counter still, you didn't feel the need to send it?"

"You said you would. I thought you meant it."

"Well, I'm sorry I've been busy at work and have other things on my mind."

"Jade, calm down."

"What the fuck ever. I'll send it in now."

Little fights like this over house payments and groceries and who's going to take Summer to ballet and Jamie to guitar lessons turn into something else. Turn into those explosive days and dynamite nights all over again (without the make-up sex, because going to bed angry is e a s y).

Summer quits ballet when she's 14. Jamie smashes his guitar. BeckandJade are too busy fighting to notice the mess they've made of their children. Summer studies all the time and doesn't date. She never wants to be like her parents. Jamie locks himself in his bedroom, listens to loud metal music, never cuts his hair.

BeckandJade get divorced without ever trying to fix anything; Jade gets the house, Beck gets the instruments, and they both get joint custody.

!

They NEVER talk to each other. That would just be awkward and unnecessary and both of them are still too mad at each other to even look at each other much less hold a civil conversation. Beck is mostly mad at himself; he didn't marry for love, he married for _convenience. _Andre and Robbie and all of his other friends have wives they still l o fucking v e and want to spend forever with. He doesn't. Jade isn't mad at herself. It's not her fault her ex-husband is a loser.

Summer leaves for boarding school her junior year of high school, because she hates all of the drama and the yelling and the fact that her dad lives in a fucking CONDOMINIUM in Malibu as if he's trying to one-up her mom. She doesn't come home for holidays, and during summers she never leaves her room.

Jamie gets a lip ring. Transfers to Hollywood Arts. Starts dating Tori Vega's daughter, Lila. He still doesn't cut his hair, like some sort of active rebellion against major changes in his wardrobe. Beck says, "You remind me a lot of myself back in high school" one day. Jamie yells at him so the whole neighborhood can hear; **I will never be like you**.

!

Andre and Cat celebrate their thirtieth wedding anniversary.

Beck sits at a table by himself. Jade doesn't; she wants to blend in with everybody else so her ex-husband won't notice her.

They both look older, of course. Age and children have wreaked their usual havoc. Beck's black hair is peppered with gray in some spots, he has frown lines mapped over his forehead, the skin near his mouth and eyes. Jade's hair is shorter. Her mouth is harsher, and her hips are wider, but she's still beautiful. Perhaps that was one of the fundamental issues of BeckandJade; they expected to stay young and beautiful for the rest of their lifes like they were living in some sort of fuckin' fairytale made of rainbows and butterflies.

His deep brown eyes search the entire party until he finds her squished in between a much older and wiser looking Sinjin Van Cleef and a terribly frail Erwin Sikowitz. She's smiling that fake smile she always puts on when she's not listening to a word you're saying. Beck smirks.

Years of separation have softened him enough that he approaches her when the party is over, sitting outside the hall smoking a cigarette. She's wearing a black dress with an awfully severe neckline. Typical of her to not be dressed for the occasion.

"Remember me?"

She looks at him. Stares for a few minutes. And then she looks sort of exasperated and tired at the same time so she pats the stretch of concrete next to her. "Sit your ass down. Let's have a conversation."

He sits down next to her. She offers him a cigarette like they haven't just ignored each other for at least twelve years. "Kids ever call you?" he asks casually.

"Christmas and my birthday. I've met the grandkids twice."

"Think that's our fault?"

"I don't think. I know. Hell, I wouldn't call me either," Jade snorts before taking a long drag of the cigarette. He was always nagging her to quit when they were together; it's not really his job to care about that now.

Beck smiles bitterly. "I love them."

"We never loved each other," Jade responds quietly as if that's the explanation for their problems and world hunger and the cure for cancer all rolled into one. They sit on he curb for a long time, smoking until Jade's all out of cigarettes. Beck gets up to leave, but Jade pulls him back down.

"Let's have coffee sometime."

"Like a date?"

He's definitely too old for dates which might lead to going to her house which might lead to sex which he will definitely regret in the end. Because she's probably using him. Okay, no. She is using him.

"Not like a date. Like as friends," Jade looks disgusted, rolls her eyes, stands up and brushes the dirt off of her outfit.

"Okay."

"I'm using you, you know."

She says this as she walks away, followed immediately by, "I want our kids back. Not you."

Beck feels better, knowing he was right about her. He always was.

!

LMFAO WORST ENDING TO EVER EXIST. i just wasn't sure how exactly to end this otherwise. buuuut yeah that's just kind of how i see bade "working out" in the end.

hope i crushed some dreams. :D LOLJK. sort of.

**please review with more than "so sad" or "i loved it" or really anything that's two or three words long because what the hell am i supposed to get out of that. i mean really.**


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